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Whether you begin with words or art, designing effective collateral material is a challenge. While big businesses spend enormous amounts of money to get just the right logo and imagery to represent their corporate brand; entrepreneurs have to either design their own, or work outside their area of expertise to direct someone else to design for them. It is difficult because, while it’s easy to know when shown what we don’t like, it can be extremely hard to identify and explain what we do want and why.

There are a number of ways to approach this. But one good way to start is to look at your body of work and identify what aspect of it feels core to what you do. That can be a passage in your biography, a tagline for a series, a cover design that particularly resonates, or it can be a character in your story. This element may not find its way visibly into your design (ie. for a business card, banner, postcard, brochure, sell sheet, or for swag) but it can help give you a perspective to start to work from.

Once you have that concept in mind, you can consider style and content. Don’t think too hard at the start about trying to come up with the right answer, just browse for samples of similar items that resonate with you and save them in a format you can easily reference – I like PowerPoint for this, since it’s easy to browse, rearrange and edit.

Think in terms of imagery, color, typeface and tone of messaging – and then use free association and jot down a list of words you may want to incorporate. Then sort out which elements you like best and think how those might fit together. It’s fine not to have a clear picture of what you’ll design at this point, but you should find you have more of an idea then you did before of where it might be headed – and you may have examples of what you like to show others to get good ideas about what you might want to do.

There are many free and affordable apps to use for design, such as Canva and DesignBold (for drag and drop formatting), PicMonkey and BeFunky (for photo editing), Type Genius and Google Fonts (for typeface selection), and Pictaculous and Adobe Color CC (for exploring color combinations). You can also find specific template apps for designing posters, brochures and other materials.

When working on your own or with a designer, it’s good to keep in mind basic design principles:

Make sure to include key contact information and your website link.

Avoid clutter and have good flow to the text.

Use strong graphics and good contrast, so the piece is appealing and easy to read.

Don’t use busy textures, or lots of colors and fonts that can compete with each other.

Keep design elements simple and remember to use negative space.

Include a call-to-action such as an email address or invitation to visit your website.

Opt for classic or timeless design over what is trendy, unless you’ll redo frequently.

Check that you have permission to use the art or graphics.

Use hi-res images and high quality paper stock.

Don’t fall in love with a single idea, so that you’re not willing to consider other options.

Ensure the design you come up with can be used on multiple pieces and platforms, so you build a visual identity. Remember too that less is often more when it comes to good design.

When Erin Chack, senior writer at BuzzFeed, wanted to share what it felt like to produce her YA novel, This Is Really Happening, she simulated the experience of giving birth. In fact, that’s often what it does feel like for authors when each book is published – and tending to one’s books can feel a lot like parenting with each having it’s own needs and challenges.

The success or difficulty each book has in terms of reviews, book sales and its status at the publishing house also can either bolster or take its toll on the author’s confidence when it comes to marketing and writing subsequent books. It poses questions of how much attention each new book should get and presents a risk of prematurely orphaning a book or project before finding out how the market will actually respond over time.

As publishers and book marketers who handle many books can tell you, individual books can surprise you, and it’s not always apparent what a book’s potential is before giving it a concerted effort with marketing and promotion. In the context of good vs. bad reviews, one of the most striking conversations I had with a client was about one book that had been the author’s second publication many years before and then was reissued after that author had won a number of prestigious awards for other books. One key review journal had originally given the book a lukewarm review, and then when the book was reissued, the same publication came out with a review by a different person that gave substantial praise for the same book. Whether that was just a difference in reviewer opinion or influenced by the author’s subsequent career was unclear, but the fact is that had the book received the very favorable review on its first go-round, it would have had an impact on both the author’s confidence and the market’s perception of the author.

In a recent conversation with an artist who was struggling with a similar question – whether she should include work she had done previously in an upcoming show or try to make new, better work, I asked whether she was sure the earlier work wasn’t as worthy of being shown. In the case of an author, a question might be: how can you tell what role each book may play in your overall body of work? So, in the case of Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird made her a huge success with the very first book she published, but what if that had been her fifteenth or her fiftieth book? How would the market have perceived her then? What if another of her books had been less of a critical success, but had made a significant impact on some number of its readers? And what if the sequence of the books in an author’s body of work is a roll of the dice – that you don’t know whether your Newbery winning or top-selling book will come out at the beginning, middle or later part of your career? The fact is, your career will benefit from trying to give each book its due – in the writing and in the marketing because each new one can build on the ones before whether by proving more successful than the last, or providing a chance to make mistakes and then improve in the next round.

In an opinion piece in Forbes earlier this year, technology writer, Aj Agrawal, called 2017 “The Year of Video Marketing.” Certainly, video content has seen tremendous growth and expectations are for that to continue. According to a recent report by Hubspot, this year, “video content will represent 74% of all Internet traffic.” For book promotion, authors and publishers have been using video in the form of book trailers for years and in that time, the trailer format has gained fans and detractors.

But digital storytelling can take many forms – and there are many tools now to make video creation – animations, topical timelines, interactive maps, slide shows and advertisements – easier than ever and they’re often free. I’ve written in the past about some of the timeline and animating platforms like Dipity, PowToon and GoAnimate, but there are a number of new tools and formats that offer additional formats worth experimenting with and imagining what might fit well into your plans for marketing books you write or illustrate.

One format is the cinemagraph, which you’ve probably seen even if you aren’t familiar with the term. These are seemingly still photos, but have one video element that moves and will repeat in a loop. To create a cinemagraph, with a program like Cinemagr.am or Flixel, you start with a short video, you then highlight, extract and save a small portion of the clip and that will then become the static element that the rest will play against – either in forward motion, reverse, or alternating forward-reverse. Once your cinemagraph is created, you can then add filters and hashtags and post on social media. Biteable is a very easy-to-use new online tool that can be used for free or an upgraded $100/yr. to create a mini presentation, slide show, intro piece or “explainer” video in just a few minutes. Claiming to be “The World’s Simplest Video Maker,”

Biteable provides templates that include scenes – either as animation, footage or still images, and then gives options for selecting a color palette and music – or you can upload custom colors or your own sound file. You can then add images, text and hashtags – and then Biteable will email you a finished file – mine took less than 15 minutes.

Fast forward to the next wave: A little over a year ago, Facebook announced the launch of 360-degree video, a format that bears watching as an outgrowth of Facebook’s purchase of Oculus Rift and their aggressive push in virtual reality technology. With 360 video, the film that’s produced allows the person filming to capture what they’re seeing in a full 360 degrees and the viewer can look at that video and by dragging their cursor, see in what the videographer saw in all directions – in front, all around and behind. This allows the viewer to share the full experience of that moment. The 360 cameras, like Samsung’s Gear 360 cost several hundred dollars, but that’s likely to come down as more enter the field.

Pinterest offers a variety of opportunities for authors and illustrators. It is one of the biggest social media channels for promotion and for sales, and it is drawing record traffic. As of 2015, there were more than 100 million monthly active users, which is more than double the 48.7 million users reported in 2013. While it is still well behind social platforms, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook; Pinterest views itself as having a different role than the others – one that’s more about search and discovery – and it is good for both visibility and sales. As of 2016, Pinterest reported it has 2 billion searches per month, that 55 percent of online shoppers named the site as their favorite online platform, and that there are more than 2 million users pinning on it every day. The demographic is ideal for children’s books given that eighty-five percent of the users are female and 67 percent are Millennials.

While it’s easy to think of the platform as a virtual scrapbook to use to pin and share images and ideas, Pinterest also provides a massive sales channel for business. It enables users to purchase products by directing them to a company or online store website, or by purchasing directly within Pinterest using the “Buy Now” button in conjunction with Shopify. For authors and illustrators, Pinterest offers the opportunity to reach readers, parents and teachers in a variety of creative ways.

Inspiration on what to post about is easy. You can look at author and illustrator boards and also browse some of the more than 30 million education boards designed by teachers and parents to help kids learn in creative ways. Each board that you set up should have a theme or concept. Themes can focus on your body of work, individual books, background research, inspirational quotes, or personal information you want to share about your work or yourself.

Lists are always popular, so you can do a themed board of your titles by genre, by age, by publisher or by series. You can group books with images of related products, like games and toys; or you can group your books with books by other authors and illustrators. You can then encourage others to share the information. If you decide to allow access permission to your boards, you can invite others to add images and information.

Boards are great for highlighting educational concepts, so you can include boards with book recommendations tied to holidays and events, classroom activities or resource recommendations. You can also use boards to provide glimpses into your writing or illustrating process.

When signing up you should be sure to provide a biography, your author photo and then include descriptions with images you share. Once you’re underway, you can make pinning easier by installing a ”Pin It” button on your browser that allows you to pin images while surfing the web. You should also link your account to your other social media platforms, so you can share news of pins as you add them. To encourage direct sales, you can link back to your website or to your publisher’s site if books can be purchased there; or link directly to online booksellers or other online retailers.

In addition to posting your own material and information on Pinterest, you should look for ways to engage by commenting on, liking and following boards other people have. You can also set up group boards for collaborating. As you experiment with different types of formats and engagement, you can assess what’s working well by looking at what has been clicked on and how often your items are getting repinned.

Influencers –Where to Find Them and What to Do When You Have Influencer marketing has grown in popularity over the last several years. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute recently named it one of the top content marketing trends for 2017. What is it, and where did it come from?

You can think of it as the offspring of social media – and what in simpler days we called word-of-mouth. But today it’s more strategic and more viable in terms of reaching influential people you might not have had access to before. In our field, there are of course the people who are industry influencers – book buyers, key librarians and educators, and others who are opinion-makers about authors and books. They can be found speaking at conferences, attending publisher events, and on the award committees at the national and regional level. They’re also often reviewers, bloggers, and active on social media about education, publishing, and children’s and young adult literature.

But what if you want to reach key influencers outside the field? You should think about doing this because books for young people are also topical – and each topic has influencers of its own. Whatever the topic of your book, look at ways you can reach the people whose voices carry weight in those fields. Betters still, find influencers tied to both that topic and education or children. It’s even more important if many of your books focus on a particular genre or topic area. The value of cultivating these people is that they can introduce you to a broader audience – and commend you to others who respect their opinion.

The simplest place to start is Google Search. Type in related keywords and phrases and see who has written on the topic, what organizations relate to that, and which names you see again and again. You can also check Twitter to see who’s tweeting about your topic and how many followers they have. To come at it from the top down, you can use AllTop to find the most influential bloggers and reporters on a given topic. They aggregate thousands of sources and update hourly to provide links to the most trafficked sites covering hundreds of topics from adoption to zoology. Other sites, like Social Mention, BuzzSumo and the newer EpicBeat will curate social media to tell you which content has gotten the most shares, likes and feedback – and can tell you who are the key influencers in that topic area.

Once you identify people, you have to have a meaningful way to engage. Simple ways to start can be to comment on their posts and share their content. But lots of people are doing that, so it’s hard to stand out. But if you create online content of your own via a blog or other platform, you can try to interest them more directly. One way would be to quote them and link to their material and then let them know via Twitter that you’ve done so. Taking that a step further you can crowd source an article and ask for quotes from a number of people whose opinions you value and who you’d like to connect with, and then share the story back with them when you’re done. As you begin to develop a relationship, you can invite people to provide a guest blog for your site, do an interview with you for a feature, and perhaps later, gain an endorsement quote for your new book.

The results will be that you’ll broaden your base of connections and benefit from associating with people you admire. Your research and time spent following social conversations will also make you better versed in what’s trending on topics you care about. That’s something you can bring back to conversations you have at conferences, publisher events and with literary luminaries who will value your expertise and may also be interested to connect to other influencers you know.

Being asked to give interviews is flattering and exciting: it’s a testament to your acceptance and importance in the field. For new authors and illustrators, it represents a milestone of achieving hard earned recognition now that you are published.

To interview well is an art. Depending on who you are and what your books are about, interviews can feel like easy, comfortable chats or can be complex or challenging. The good news is that being in the entertainment and education business, you’re much less likely to face hardcore investigative or hostile questions. But that doesn’t mean the opportunity to be interviewed should be taken lightly. If you want to get the most out of the experience, you should put a process in place to go into each interview well prepared.

Start by recognizing that each interview will be different in format, length, tone, and the dynamic that exists between you and the interviewer.

Print and online interviews are often the easiest because you have a set of written questions provided and can take the time you need to give thorough and thoughtful answers. The key here is to be prompt in responding, ideally no more than a few days. If you can’t, let the reporter know how soon you will be able to reply and make sure to do so. Also, if you have one or two additional questions you’d like to answer, or anything you don’t want to discuss, let the reporter know. Remember to provide supplementary material – photos, links, contact information – when you send in your answers so everything’s at hand when the story gets compiled.

Radio interviews, which can be done by phone or in-studio, provide an opportunity for comfortable conversation. Still, the casualness of the format can lead to sloppiness if you’re not mindful of time length and what information you want to make sure to cover. Start by making sure to provide the producer or host with your book and biographical information, as well as website links, book trailer and cover art jpegs that can be used to feature you on their show’s website. Then make sure you ask for information about format: the length of the segment, who will interview you and, if it’s live, whether there will be call-ins or anyone else on with you during the segment. If you’re calling in, find out whether you should call at the stated time or if they want you on the line a few minutes ahead. Prepare a bulleted cheat sheet that you can glance at to make sure you have any key reference information and reminders on what you want to discuss. At the same time, make sure you’re giving your full attention to the interviewer and responding comfortably to questions you’re asked.

TV and other face-to-face interviews take more preparation because you need to think about how you look as well as what you’re saying. If you’re doing the interview remotely, you also need to consider what’s behind you that viewers can see and make sure that the lighting’s flattering and nothing’s distracting or odd seeming in the background. With audio and video broadcast, it’s very important to keep a close eye on the time and with that in mind, say your piece succinctly and then stop, so the interviewer knows you’re ready to move on. Know too that it’s often good to pause before answering, particularly if you’re nervous, to give yourself a chance to compose your answer and to avoid run-on answers that can result from being uncomfortable in the spotlight. With television, it’s also important to maintain good eye contact with the interviewer and avoid looking at the camera or monitors.

That said, be aware that there will be times that you’ll be caught off-guard in an interview. It’s useful, particularly when preparing for a live interview, to having someone do a mock one in advance with you asking a mix of easy and hard questions, so you know what may come up and can think ahead how you want to answer. If you’re dealing with a difficult or controversial subject, you should acknowledge the question asked and reply to the degree you’re comfortable, but also have a way to segue to something valuable that you want to impart.

Overall, the key to interviewing well is preparing ahead and gaining experience – the more you do, the more comfortable you’ll feel.

As with most things there’s no need to speculate – just ask Google that question and you’ll find numerous quizzes happy to walk you through to let you know where you stand. I was pleased to be named Chief Marketing Officer by t-shirt company Printsome after taking their quiz, which among other questions asked me to choose between a picture of a pencil, a pair of work boots and a pile of money.

Being loyal to the publishing industry, I chose the pencil, of course. How this helped them decide to elevate me to the top of their company, I have no idea, but in some ways it reinforced how I often feel when trying to put a fine point on the vagaries of marketing, which is both a science and an art.

There are a lot of cold hard facts in marketing – and our increasing ability to analyze customer data as it relates to buying timing, frequency, influences and incentives – is causing a sea change in how we think about our relationship with customers and prospects.

At the same time, consumers are becoming both more demanding about the kind of engagement they want and increasingly fatigued at being pitched products and services morning to night.

In a particularly surprising statement in January, Steve Howard, IKEA’s head of sustainability announced at a live business forum hosted by The Guardian that “if we look on a global basis, in the west we have probably hit peak stuff. We talk about peak oil. I’d say we’ve hit peak red meat, peak sugar, peak stuff….”

If so, convincing consumers they need what we’re selling will be very difficult. The key questions to consider are: What will capture a prospective customer’s attention? What will make my book or brand stand out from its competition? And, what will foster and sustain brand loyalty (which can be to a book, character, series, author/illustrator, or publisher) over time? Behavioral targeting, using analytics, computer tracking, browsing and search history, to create profiles of consumers is the preferred route for those who have access to enough data.

But there are other important ways you can focus as a marketer. List service company, IDG, makes four other common distinctions:

Multichannel Master -someone who looks to many channels to engage with customers – you may well be doing this by engaging in social media, going to schools and events to speak, networking at conferences, and publishing news about your books and outreach

Madison Avenue Creative -a marketer who focuses on brand building – this is particularly important when promoting a series, when engaging with a YA audience and when you intend to focus on a particular genre or niche market

SoMoLo Marketers -the focus here is on social, mobile and local market outreach – this will have a lot to do with the age and inclination of your target audience, both in terms of how best to engage and what platforms are most effective

Old School Direct Marketers -this is where engagement is more traditional – and, typically, more labor intensive because it involves direct meet and greet and one-to-one selling. It is most beneficial when significant sales volume may result – so would make sense when trying to find licensing or special sales opportunities.

Effective marketing depends on your particular circumstances and will likely evolve over time. It’s also important to evaluate your strengths, weaknesses and the resources you have to draw from to help you determine where to put your emphasis – and when to get help.

Ask yourself: Which of the IDG types do I find most appealing? What are my competitors doing? Is my publisher particularly strong in one area, and how can I best supplement what they’re doing? What is my audience likely to be most receptive to? What are the costs both in time and money of pursuing a particular direction? And what tools and resources are available to help me engage with my audience? Know that it’s okay to start with a narrow focus at first, and then expand gradually as you have working mechanisms in place.

The point is to recognize that customer engagement is a long-term proposition and the objective is to gain more traction and better knowledge of your customers with each book or product. Not that each has to reach the same audience or achieve the same sales results, but your sophistication as a marketer and your ability to recognize and adapt to market changes should grow over time.

Not sure when you’ll make time to visit the national parks? Google is prepared to take you there—virtually—both for scenic views and for close-ups of the art and artifacts you’d see. According to The Verge, Google, which has been “building out an online museum for the past five years,” is now adding nearly four thousand works of art, artifacts, and records as a result of a partnership with the National Park Service. These, along with almost sixty new Street View exhibits (50 outdoor park views and eight interior views of museums and historical locations), are part of the National Parks Collection on Google’s vast Cultural Institute site

Google Cultural Institute, which in just a few years has amassed images and information gathered from more than 1,000 groups from around the world, contains more than 730 art and cultural collections from sites and museums large and small. On one end of the spectrum are the world’s most visited institutions, including the Smithsonian, the British Museum and The Hermitage; on the other end, some that are very specialized, such as the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum and Japan’s Seto Inland Sea Folk History Museum.

Not everyone is a fan, of course. Last fall, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote in a piece entitled “The Google Art Heist” that “the more playful Google gets, the more paranoid I get.” Conceding on the one hand that the collection, containing “the most famous paintings of the Uffizi to an archive of South Korean film to virtual galleries of the pyramids,” is impressive, Ms. Dowd also pointed out questions that have been posed elsewhere about whether the “project will lead to people prowling museums from the comfort of their couch, filtering and missing out on actual visits.” Copyright concerns have also been raised, as the Washington Post reported last year, saying, as with Google’s Books project, “Google’s grand cultural efforts have been dogged by suspicion and property-rights claims.”

And, lest any area of the arts think that this couldn’t apply to them, take heed. Just two months ago, a Wall Street Journal article said the Google Cultural Institute proved that “practicing—or buying a ticket” are no longer the only ways to get to Carnegie Hall, or to more than 60 other performing arts venues around the world. Now, you can go virtually to meet famous performers, get a backstage tour, and even “be thrust in the middle of the action.”

Really, with all this, how will we find time to actually go anywhere that isn’t virtual? Except maybe the gym, until Google finds an armchair solution to burning calories…and that can’t be far off.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art got a surprise earlier this week when its Facebook post promoting their upcoming exhibition of Pop Art from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was deemed inappropriate. The offending image was of Ice Cream, painted by pop artist, Evelyne Axell in 1964. The museum said the reason given for removal was because it contained “excessive amounts of skin or suggestive content.”

Philadelphia Magazine reported that the painting was on loan to the PMA from the Collection of Serge Goisse in Belgium. The museum’s associate curator, Erica Battle, told the magazine, “We chose this work by Evelyne Axell as one of our keystone marketing images because it speaks to so many themes found throughout Pop: consumption, pleasure, and seduction.”

According to Norman Keyes, communications director for the art museum, who is quoted in the online newspaper, Metro, “‘International Pop’ features paintings, sculptures, assemblages, installations, prints and films by 80 artists, drawn from both public and private collections from around the world.”

The painting, depicting a woman licking an ice cream cone, is by one of the first female Pop artists, whose work, according to a Philadelphia Museum Tumblr post, “can be understood as a critique of mainstream Pop Art, in which women were often depicted as passive, decorative objects. In contrast, Axell sought to depict active, confident women who pursue satisfaction on their own terms—such as the protagonist of Ice Cream, who unabashedly enjoys her dessert.” The image can also be seen on a billboard ad on the Schuylkill Expressway in Philadelphia promoting the exhibit.

The painting (and many others) will be on view at the art museum from February 24ththrough May 15th.

English: Looking north across 57th St at Art Students League of New York on a sunny afternoon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Creative space is sacred to an artist. So, it’s not surprising that passions have flared on West 57th Street in New York at the prospect of change adjacent to—and cantilevered over—the site of the famed Art Students League. The 140-year-old nonprofit art school “that counts Winslow Homer, Norman Rockwell, Georgia O’Keeffe and Mark Rothko among its alumni” is, according to The New York Times, the scene of a “battle being fought between the school’s leadership and a faction of its 3,945 voting members” over the granting of air rights to build, in part, above the school.

On paper, the deal looks good for the Art Students League, which has negotiated to be paid close to $32 million in return for granting air rights—the right to build in the empty space above a piece of property—to Extell Development Company, which intends to build “one of the tallest residential towers in the world” next door.

The League administration’s plan, according to the petition that was circulated earlier this year to gain support for the decision, is to allow Extell to “build a cantilever some 30 stories above the League and 6,000 square feet of air rights.” Then, they’ll use that money in the arts building to add floors, additional studios, unveil skylights that have been covered up, and to restoring “gallery space and the library.” Their board also sees this as a way to provide the League “a strong foundation for a capital fundraising campaign to pay for the expansion.” Further, they want to have money to use to “keep tuition low, and augment the League’s endowment to serve future generations of students.”

The dissenting group, which is called ASL 2025, has also expressed dissatisfaction with the school’s president, ­­­­­­­­Salvatore Barbieri, claiming that he has “ruled by fiat, making up the rules as he goes along.” Led by Marne Rizika, a painter and printmaker, and Richard Caraballo, a graphic designer, ASL 2025 claims there have also been “efforts to intimidate and stifle any dissent.”

In return, according to the Times, President Barbieri, has called the attacks a “classic pattern of amateurish slanderous writing” filled with “false and distorted allegations without supporting facts.” And the institution’s lawyers have said, “Under Mr. Barbieri’s tenure, the league is in better financial shape than it has ever been…. Its prospects for longevity and the ability to educate artists for generations to come have never been brighter.”

But that’s not the way Rizika and Caraballo see it. “The sense of collegiality that formerly existed between art students, instructors and administrators, in an ‘open-door’ policy, has disappeared,” said Ms. Rizika, who unsuccessfully challenged Mr. Barbieri for the presidency several weeks ago, “and been replaced with autocratic rule, which has included hiring armed guards for members’ meetings.

“The opponents agree that overturning the sale itself is impossible. The purpose of the suit, Mr. Caraballo said, is to challenge the way the 2014 vote approving the deal was conducted.”

Today, the League remains an institution run by artists for artists. They follow in the footsteps of the many famous artists who have “shaped the vocabulary of art worldwide, [and] have been instructors, lecturers and students at the League. They include, among many others, Thomas Hart Benton, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Man Ray, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Nevelson, Red Grooms, Donald Judd, Roy Lichtenstein, Ben Shahn and Cy Twombly.” Hopefully, the two sides can reach a comfortable agreement soon. Perhaps it can help to recall what Paul Klee once said about his art space: “All is well with me. The rain doesn’t reach me, my room is well heated, what more can one ask for?”